The home entertainment business continues to grow, offering an ever-increasing array of entertainment products or components, such as televisions or video monitors, television set-top boxes, digital video recorders (DVRs), digital video disc (DVD) players, audio receivers/amplifiers, multiple-speaker systems, and the like. Typically, such components are designed to be connected together to create a single entertainment system capable of providing various forms of entertainment, such as broadcast television programming from satellite, cable, and/or terrestrial sources, broadcast radio content, DVD-based movies, music stored on Compact Disc (CD), and music recorded in Motion Picture Experts Group 1, Audio Layer 3 (MP3) format, to a user.
With this advanced capability typically comes increased complexity. For example, entertainment systems that include just a handful of components often require multiple cable connections between the various components. Also, to allow the user to enjoy the desired content, the components normally must be configured in a specific fashion. For example, when an audio/video output of a television set-top box is connected to an input of a television, the television must be configured appropriately for content from the set-top box to be displayed on the television. More specifically, if the set-top box output is connected to a High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) input of the television, the television must be configured to receive and process the audio/video signals from the HDMI input, as opposed to those associated with another input of the television. If, instead, a modulated output of the set-top box is connected to an input of the television, the tuner of the television must be set to the proper channel or frequency employed by the set-top box to transmit the content in order to present the content to the user.
In addition, once the entertainment system is properly configured to present the desired content to the user, the possibility of inadvertently changing the configuration of one or more components, and thus accidentally terminating the delivery of content to the user, in significant. Continuing the example from above, a user may mistakenly press a button on a remote control that alters the configuration of the set-top or the television, thus terminating the display of the television content. Further, if the user is not familiar with the entertainment system, and how the various components are connected to each other, returning the entertainment system to its previously operational configuration may be difficult.